For real? Every year if you wanna keep up you gotta buy another Oculus?

Not at all, that quote is taken out of context. When Palmer was asked if the life-cycle would be like a console (5-6 years) or a mobile phone (1 year) he stated that it would be closer to the mobile platform. Meaning that it's probably every 2-3 years.

And would you expect anything different? VR is an extremely new technology and medium, there is bound to be an insanely quick development cycle with all of these devices as everyone figures out what works and what doesn't. Just look at how far the medium has come in the last 1-2 years, and now there will be actual money coming into these companies from VR which will only give them more resources to advance their respective HMDs

Yeah I suppose. Just adds to the cost though. Lets see what the rest do, maybe they'll adjust the price.